Pan de yuca or cassava cheese bread

Ecuadorian pan de yuca are small cheesy breads made with yuca flour (cassava/tapioca starch) and cheese. There are variations of these delicious breads in many Latin countries. They are known as chipas in Paraguay/Argentina, pan de queso in Colombia, cuñape in Bolivia, and pao de queijo in Brazil. The variations and exact ingredients vary from one place to another, my recipe for pan de yuca is made with yuca starch, cheese, butter and eggs. Yuca bread makes a delicious warm appetizer and the breads can be made in advance and baked minutes before serving. Leftover breads will get hard when they get cold, but can be reheated in the microwave (great for breakfast the day after). The flour is made from yuca root, and is also known as cassava or tapioca starch, the flour can be found in most supermarkets, in Latin grocery stores, or online.

Combine the yuca starch or flour, cheese, baking powder and salt in a food processor, blend to mix well.

Add the butter and eggs.

Mix until small dough balls begin to form, if it's too dry add 1-2 tablespoons of water or milk. Add more if needed.

Remove the dough from the food processor and roll into a ball, you can make the dough ahead and store in the refrigerator for up to a day.

To make the dough by hand, combine all the ingredients in large bowl, using melted (cooled down) butter, and mix until you have a smooth dough. It's actually very easy to prepare by hand.

Pre-heat the oven to 500 F.

Make small round shaped breads with the dough and place on a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Bake immediately or store in the fridge until ready to bake. I find that they turn out best if you do let them chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes before baking.

Once the oven reaches 500F, turn on broiler, place the breads on the middle rack and bake until the breads are golden, about 5-7 minutes. Another option is to pre-heat the oven to 400F and bake at 400F for about 5 minutes and then turn on the broiler.

In Ecuador, pan de yuca is usually served with yogurt smoothies and there are several restaurants whose specialty is yuca bread with yogurt. I usually serve yuca bread as an appetizer, with tree tomato aji, but they are also great for breakfast or with an afternoon coffee or tea. My kids love yuca bread and I always let them have some dough so they can make their own shapes: ovals, triangles, spirals, etc. They get very excited as they watch the oven and wait for their bread to be ready.

I used to make yuca bread by hand, and it is probably one of the easiest breads to make by hand, the ingredients are easy to mix, but it is a little bit sticky, so I tried using the food processor instead and it works great. If you don’t have a food processor or prefer to make it by hand, just melt the butter to make it easier to mix the ingredients.

Notes, tips, ideas & variations for making yuca cheese breads:

I’ve been making these delicious cheesy breads for so long, and in different places when we travel. I am constantly finding that the yuca bread dough is so flexible and can be used in many different ways. Here’s a quick compilation of some of the variations, tips, and ideas that I’ve tried over the years:

– The texture of the yuca breads will vary based on the type of the cheese you use, this recipe uses mozzarella (not fresh, but the grated harder type) and I sometimes mix it with queso fresco. This results in very soft and smooth tasting breads which my family loves. For a cheese bread with a crunchier texture and stronger cheese flavor, you can use a harder more aged cheese: parmesan, gruyere, emmental, etc. When we visit my in-laws in France I usually take the tapioca flour from the US and use local cheese (usually the grated emmental they sell at most grocery stores there). When making these with dryer aged cheese you will need to add more liquid (water or milk) to the dough to get it to the right consistency.

– If you want the yuca breads to have a perfect uniform shape or if they tend to fall flat after baking (this tends to happen more if they didn’t have time in the fridge before or if the oven isn’t pre-heated/very hot when baking them) – you can use a small muffin tin to keep them in place.

– To freeze the unbaked yuca bread rolls, place them on a baking sheet with wax paper, place in the freezer. As soon as the breads are frozen, transfer them to a Ziploc bag and save in the freezer until needed. To bake them from frozen, pre-heat the oven to 400-425F, place the frozen yuca breads on a baking sheet lined with parchment, and bake until golden on top.

– Grilled yuca cheese breads: You can also grill the yuca breads, this works best on a pizza stone. Make sure your grill is very hot and the pizza stone is pre-heated, then place the breads on the stone and let them cook until golden. They tend to have a crunchier outer texture when grilled.

– Yuca cheese griddle tortillas: You can also flatten them into thick tortilla shapes and cook them in a grill or in a stovetop pan.

– Yuca bread waffles: Another idea is to cook them in a waffle maker. Simply form the dough into a thicker patty (slightly smaller than your waffle maker), and place it in the waffle maker, cook until crispy on both sides.

– Yuca bread pizzas: You can flatten the dough as thin as you would like, add a light layer of sauce (tomato, pesto, etc), your favorite toppings, and bake at 450F until crispy.

– Stuffed yuca cheese breads: Make the breads as usual, but put a piece of guava paste in the middle of each one, seal, and bake for a sweet & savory variation. Other filling ideas include cooked chorizo, cooked bacon, a piece of a different type of cheese, etc.

– Yuca bread empanadas: Use the yuca bread dough to make gluten free empanada discs, just be warned that the dough is very fragile, fill it with you favorite savory or sweet filling, and bake or fry.

– Fun holiday shaped yuca bread treats: For holidays you can use cookie cutters to cut the dough into different shapes and decorate them with olives, pimento peppers, etc. For Halloween, I used a ghost cookie cutter to make these cute little yuca cheese ghosts with pimento pepper eyes.

Reader Interactions

Comments

I love your recipe, I use feta cheese and works perfectly. I also use coconut milk instead of water or regular milk. For fat I use a mixture of ghee butter and olive oil. I make them when I travel for my gluten free diet. Thanks.

Fernando, from NJ.
I am originally from Ecuador, and of course I love pan de yuca. I followed your recipe as suggested by you, and I just want to tell you that my family and I have enjoyed these pan de yuca. Thank you for the directions and tips about baking these delicious pan de yuca.

I lived on these while living in Brazil 40 years ago while in the Peace Corps…came home and married an Ecuadorian and have continued to make these for my family for all these years. My favorite additional ingredient is chopped yellow chiles! Perfect with a cup of coffee.

Wow! We were exposed to this at a Peruvian/Bolivian restaurant in Rhode Island during our travels and were blown away by the perfect combo of cheese and bread.

I found this recipe and kept my expectations low (I feel like it never works to recreate something you’ve had in a restaurant), but there was no need! It turned out awesome! I can’t believe how easy it was and how much it tastes like what we had. My husband said, “Spot on.” :) I cut the recipe in half and it all still worked perfectly. Will definitely be making these again! Thanks so much!

I spent a year in Ecuador when I was younger and I often find myself coming to your page to recreate the delicious food I found while there. Thank you for publishing! My argentine wife likes these much more than the Chipá in her country. Mil gracias!

Thank You for this wonderful easy-to-do recipe! I was just wondering about the measurements a bit. If i convert 4 cups (of grated mozarella cheese) to grams, i get 1kg of cheese! Is this correct? Do i really need such hige quantities?
Thanks in advance!

Had these at a Brazilian restaurant and they were fabulous so immediately tried to find a recipe online. Found your recipe and now have mine chilling in the fridge for 30 minutes. Can’t wait to try them!

How long do you think you could keep these in the fridge if you wanted to make them ahead of time for dinner guests? Could you keep them a couple hours in the fridge? Overnight, if covered? Or would the butter and cheese be too firm?

Hi Lisa – They can stay in the fridge for a couple of days. You can also freeze them (place them on a baking sheet lined with wax paper, freeze them, and then put them in a freezer bag) and then bake them directly.

Layla, I ate these with Ecuadorian Avocado Soup while in the Peace Corps. Could you find the Avocado Soup from around the mid-sixties and print it? Thanks so much for your site. I have always said “I should have stayed in Ecuador”. Yuca bread from Chone and Biscochos from Cayambe were heavenly.

Thank you so much for the wonderful recipes. My husband and I are moving to Cuenca and me being a true foody, this site opens many doors for me. I will be making your Chicken and rice soup today ( snowing today) and these rolls for dinner. My 80 year old mother-in-law has Celiac disease and I will have her over.

Thank you, thank you!!!!! I had these in Florida and a few years back and every time I go visit I make sure I take a bag full home which is El Paso right now…. I can’t wait to make them, all I have to do is find some yucca flour… I look forward to trying more of ur recipes…..

This bread is far healthier than other types of bread because it is made with yucca. All wheat (and the flour that is made from it) is genetically altered and has been shown to be the cause of major health problems…diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease and cancer. While yucca is a carbohydrate and therefore contributes to insulin levels, it is far healthier than wheat.

Hi Annie – I made these over the summer in Ecuador and found that they work best with 1/2 quesillo (or queso fresco) and 1/2 Ecuadorian mozzarella than with quesillo alone. You can find the mozzarella at any local tienda.

Yuca bread is very easy to make by hand, just mix the ingredients together in the same order as you would in the food processor. I also recommend having the butter at room temperature or slightly melted (but not warm or hot) to make it easier to mix everything together. You also might need an extra tablespoon or two of water if mixing by hand.

Laylita, I know this is a kind of old post. But I just joined pinterest, and decided to look around your website for more recipes from you that I might like and I stumbled upon this one! I used to eat Pan de Yuca from Gustapan in Quito and I miss it terribly. But now I live in Montana and am so far away from a good Mexican or South American market. Could I get Yuca flour here by the name of Tapioca flour? Or would that be too different?

Hello Laylita,
Glad I found your website, esp. this recipe for pan de yuca. Just wondering, I remember my family making the pan de yuca with cream cheese, do you konw this alternate recipe using cream cheese?
Thanks, Carla

Hi Carla – I haven’t ever made them using cream cheese, I’ll ask around and see if anyone knows how to make them that way.

So are these inedible if served cold? I was thinking about making them for a project in my college Spanish class, but I don’t know if I’d be able to reheat them in time. What if I reheated them 3 or 4 hours ahead of time, would they still be warm enough, or would that be too long?

Hi Lizzie, they would still be edible, but just won’t taste as good. If you make them ahead of time, I would recommend microwaving the yuca breads right before serving them – it’s as close as you can get to serving them warm out of the oven.

Just a suggestion. If you like your pan de yucas on the softer and mushier side (like I do), kind of like the texture of freshly baked bread, cut down the butter to 1/4 of a stick and add instead milk until you feel the dough is easy enough to shape with your hands but not too much so the pan de yucas don’t fall apart on the baking tray.

And this is more of a a personal taste thing, I use 5-6 cups of shredded cheese instead of 4.

Pan de Yucas are excelent bread replacements for wheat sensitive individuals as they are GLUTEN FREE. I have been diagnosed with celiac , and have been using them as subsitutes for years. If you keep them for a while they will harden, but rubbing them with water before putting them in the microwave oven, will soften them and turn them almost as good as recently baked. A good source of already baked ones is to visit a local colombian bakery if you are lucky to have one in your city.

I’m so happy to have found this recipe. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador and would always get pan de yuca on the buses when I passed through Santo Domingo. Hopefully this brings back some great memories! Thanks for the recipe.

So excited to find the recipe for these. A dear friend of ours is Brazilian and described these to us as we’re a gluten-free family. So happy to find this site with recipe ideas, I’ve been buying tapioca starch from our local Asian Market for a few years now and it’s very available and affordable. I’m wondering if anyone has tried using this dough in different ways? Empanadas, for instance? It just looks so tasty and versatile. I’m always trying to find new ways to use gluten free recipes, anyway, look forward to playing with this one!

Thank you very much for this article, I am from Ecuador and I miss so much panes de yuca!! I am not very good cooking but i will do my best. I will go to that shop in London and try to get the yuca flour!! I hope to find the queso fresco as well.

I have very fond memories of eating these years ago in Bogota. I have made them in the US using tapioca starch, and can’t tell the difference. How about these ideas: use Greek yoghurt instead of the cheese? It is non fat, and tastes great. How about forming the ball around a small piece of queso fresco so you have a melted cheese ball in the center? It looks like Goya is no longer making harina de yuca, so I’m having difficulty finding it myself. But the search goes on. Got to have my pan de yucca! I would probably hug anyone who could make me arepas like I use to get in Bogota!

Laylita,
Greetings from a fellow Ecuadorian. I stumbled across your blog by accident, it is truly a culinary gem. I cooked these regularly now. Thanks for the recipe. I mixed the dough on a KitchenAid and it worked perfectly. I substituted queso fresco for the criollo cheese used in Ecuador and I could not tell the difference! I’m off to experiment with this now, maybe I’ll try some other cheeses…

I love these. However the best ones I ever had were a little bit different. I had them in Ecuador, on the way to Montecristi from the coast, from a roadside vendor fresh out of the oven. They made pan de yuca as well as pan de maiz and they were both made with the fresh farm cheese in the center rather than mixed in. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to recreate those ones, they were truly amazing. Thanks for your blog!

We tried making these this weekend and they were fabulous! Tasted exactly how I remember the ones at the Brazilian restaurants tasted. We had actually made some chicken liver pate the same night so split these little rolls and added some pate, it was heavenly. Cold ones can be reheated for about 10-20 seconds in the microwave and they’ll taste just like they were out of the oven.

Just made your pan de yuca recipe and WOW! I’m having a hard time not eating them all!

Using the food processor was a leap of faith for me — I have never used it for a dough. Used the dough blade and had to open the processor repeatedly to stir the dry ingredients into the wet. Then I turned the dough out on a counter dusted with the yuca flour and found it very easy to work with. My little “panes” are golden nuggets of delight.

To my surprise, the bag of yuca flour (Goya Tapioca Starch/Yuca Harina/Polvilho Doce) has a recipe for pan de yuca on the back. The balance of ingredients is wildly different from yours, but I’m sticking with your recipe!

Hi Laylita. I’m so glad I found this recipe. I’ve had a craving for these and your recipe looks easiest to follow from others I’ve read. Just a question…do I need to wait for the dough to rise?? On other recipes it said to use self-rising flour. Is it necessary? Also, my oven doesn’t go up to 500, so how long would I need to bake it at 400?? I’m not much of a cook, so I don’t know how to adjust baking time. Any help from anyone is appreciated. Thanks

Hi Stephanie – No need to use self-rising flour, sometimes I even forget to add the baking powder and they come out just fine. For the oven, do you have a broil option? If so, bake them at 400 for about 10-12 minutes and then turn on the broil for about 8-10 minutes or until they start to get that golden color, keep them on a lower rack when broiling and just keep on eye on them since the precise time varies from one oven to another.

I’m so mad… I wanted to try this recipe tonight as we’re going gluten free in my house, and i could not find the yuca starch at my local grocery store. I thought this was strange since i live in Puerto Rico. I sort of expected to find it there…. I’m going to have to check other stores. Thank you so much for this recipe I cannot wait to try it with local cheese. And then maybe with parmesan, chives and garlic.

In New Zealand I found tapioca flour, which is imported from Thailand. I will probably try your recipe using cow feta cheese instead of mozzarella, as other recipes I’ve read suggest queso fresco, which I’ve not been able to find in New Zealand (even from a local cheese manufacturer). Thanks for the recipes!

I was most elated to stumble across this recipe. I have been on a yeast and gluten free diet since February. I need one thing clarified. I have both cassava flour and tapioca flour. The difference. The cassava flour is made from fine milled cassava root and the tapioca flour is very very fine and white almost powder like. Which one of them are you referring to in the recipe.

Thanks for your help.

I am referring to the tapioca starch, but if you look for it in some Latin grocery stores you will find it is called Yuca Harina (which translates as yuca flour).

In Brazil, pão de queijo is made of yuca starch (polvilho), not yuca flour (farinha de mandioca). If you look for tapioca in Brazil you’ll find a different kind of flour, in spite of being the same root. Farofa is made of yuca flour.
Hi Camila – Thank you for the clarification, in Ecuador we call it both almidon (starch) and harina (flour) de yuca. I try to refer to the possible names of the ingredients mainly by what you will find it called in the US and depending on the brand (at least in stores here) you will find it here called yuca flour (or yuca harina) or mandioc/cassava starch, but I have seen one brand that lists several names including polvilho.

You’ve just made me the happiest girl in the world today. I did a double take while browsing tastespotting and said, “wow, those rolls look like pao de queijo” and it WAS. I used to live in Brasil, and though I’ve tried a million recipes for it, I’ve yet to find one that actually works for me. Yours are beautiful and I’m going to try it- probably tonight, thank you!

Hi Sara – I was just looking at that delicious salad and yummy dressing on your site, and those key lime tarts look amazing!

i love this bread! i thought parmesan cheese was used. can i use parmesan or other kinds of cheese instead of mozarella? will try this asap. it’s good we have cassava flour in the Philippines.

Parmesan cheese is mainly used for the Brazilian version (and the traditional Brazilian version also has a smaller ratio of cheese to yuca flour), I have not tried making them Parmesan yet. In Ecuador a cheese called quesillo is used, it is a very fresh soft cheese – the easiest replacement I can find outside of Ecuador is mozzarella. I have also made it with Monterrey Jack (works fine), as well as Comte (when we were visiting family in France – they came out good but the cheese flavor was a little stronger), and also with white cheddar (in London – same thing as with French cheese, they were fine but the flavor of the stronger cheese was there).

Hi Laylita,
Thank you for your recipes, I’ve already tried your seco de pollo, and it was so good, just like in Ecuador, it remembered me of great times.
Now I would like to cook panes de yuca, but I have a question for you. I have at home something my roomate bought to cook farofa (a brazilian side dish, that he prepares to acompany “feijoada”), and he calls it “yuca flour”. But I wonder if it is the same flour as you use in your recipe, because it is much thicker than wheat flour for example. So, do you know if it is the same thing ?
muchas gracias

Hi Marion – Farofa is made from yuca (or mandioca/manioc as called in Brazil) but it is very coarse, the yuca flour that you use to make pan de yuca is a very fine starchy flour, but you can probably find it at the same place that he finds the farofa. Recently I also found it at an Asian grocery store (it was called tapioca flour on the bag).

this recipe looks delicious…Just wondering if I could use an alternative to yuca flour because they don’t sell this in England?

Hi Mel – I have only made them with yuca flour, it is also know as tapioca starch or mandioc starch, my friend who lives in London mentioned that she could find it at a Latin grocery store close to Elephant & Castle (or something like that).

Hi Ruth – I’ve never used a mixer but I think it should work, I’ve made it by hand and obtained the same consistency, the cheese blends in very well with the other ingredients, you might just need to work the dough a little bit after using the mixer but it should be fine – also, when I make by hand I let the cheese rest at room temperature to soften it and also give the butter a few seconds in the microwave to help them mix together. Let me know how it works with the mixer.

Quick question–would the resulting dough still be of the same consistency if a Kitchen Aid mixer was used as opposed to a food processor? I see that your dough is very smooth textured and cannot see any of the shredded mozzarella…with no blades in the Kitchen Aid I’m not sure if it’d have the same effect…

I know this comment comes really late in the game, but our family loves these- my husband brought the recipe home from Brazil. We can find bags of tapioca starch at the Asian market (Viet Wah, in Renton), 3 for a dollar.

Hi Lilach, I’m glad you liked the yuca bread, I get the yuca flour (also called yuca harina, mandioca flour or cassva flour) at the Latino Market store at Pike Place Market, and also at La Espanola in Bellevue. Layla

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Layla Pujol is an Ecuadorian modern-day nomad who loves to cook and travel. She lives in Seattle and is currently working on her first cookbook, which will focus on delicious Ecuadorian and Latin recipes (adapted to her style). More